[FPSPACE] Viktor Savinykh's new space ambitions

[Bart Hendrickx]

Veteran cosmonaut Viktor Savinykh (now 67) says he has serious ambitions to
make another space mission, following in the footsteps of John Glenn.
Savinykh, who has headed the Moscow State University of Cartography and
Geodesy ever since his retirement as a cosmonaut in 1989, was speaking in an
interview with the weekly Delovoy Vtornik ("Business Tuesday"). The
interview (only in Russian) is available here :
http://dvtornik.ru/articles/2007/09/50/641.html

Savinykh said :

"I'm going to contradict myself. I just said that we shouldn't copy the
Americans, but now I'm going to refer to their experience. John Glenn flew
in space at the age of [77]. His example is [inspiring]. Not so long ago I
proposed myself as a candidate for Russia on a Shuttle flight and even came
up with a [research] programme that in my own opinion is not so bad. By the
way, it is directly related to the research work of our university. The
leaders of the [Russian Space Agency] jokingly told me that I'm still too
young and should wait until I'm a little older. The years are flying by and
even though I still have quite some time to go to reach Glenn's [age], I
could already start my training for the mission.... I'm convinced that I
would pass any [medical] commission, and that's not a joke!"

The fact that the research programme is related to his university's field of
specialization would indicate that it has something to do with remote
sensing rather than the type of medical experiments conducted by John Glenn,
however a combination of the two is possible as well. It's not clear if all
this is just wishful thinking by Savinykh or a proposal that is being
seriously considered, although I would lean toward the first.

Bart Hendrickx